Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today’s verses from Psalm 73 contain this euphoric language:

Whom have I in heaven but you?
and having You, I desire nothing nothing upon earth.
(v. 25)

This passage has inspired some particularly lovely musical settings that depict the possibility of an ecstatic relationship with God.

Dietrich Buxtehude (c. 1637-1707), a Danish-born organist who worked at the Mariankirche in Lübeck, wrote one such setting. This is the same musician J. S. Bach walked 250 miles to meet.

Buxtehude’s lovely song, Herr, wenn ich nur dich habe, BuxWV 38, conveys this quality of rapture with a lovely, easful chordal movement called a chaconne. This is a bass line with chords built over it that repeats continually. As the soprano sings this beautiful, soaring melody, two instruments intertwine in a delightfully instinctive dialogue. These ingredients create a wonderful sense of recurrence and continuity, of eternity really.

The performance below is particularly moving, I think, because it is simply done — just a small portable organ, a recorder, and a violin — without pretense, yet with beautiful technique.

As music uniquely can, this song expresses the joy, rest, elation, and peace communicated in the words, but in a truly embodied sense.

Yours in Christ,
Justin

Lord, Lord, if I have You alone,
I do not care for heaven and earth here.
If life and limb shall pass away,
still You will always be, o Lord,
comforting my heart,
still You will always be, o Lord,
comforting my heart and my soul.
Hallelujah!